You’re missing the point that that vast majority of Zwifters couldn’t care less about racing. It was about 10% that actively race IIRC. There are already better racing platforms out there, if you want good draft dynamics, matchmaking, rankings, no categories, custom kit, event organisation in-game, etc etc. The big open question is whether Zwift can or even wants to sort out the racing fiasco, or whether their focus is better spent on the more casual users of the platform, that can be served without fundamental and complex changes to the underlying architecture.
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Zwift should be coming up with a solution that doesn’t require any 3rd party site/input. To do so shows that it’s incomplete. Make it simple. Treat it as a game.
That’s a good point. If the suitability of Zwift for racing isn’t what attracts/retains the majority of the user base then the amount of effort spent on it should be proportionate. The loss of 10% of users to a competitive platform might be made up for by other improvements and changes to the game. Hell, create a complete “arcade” mode with mad power-ups, unrealistic physics etc like Mario Kart and see if that doesn’t attract a whole new bunch of subscribers 
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Well… it’s not so hard to see that the categories haven’t been working for a long time, it’s not something new.
Just the fact that there’s another platform to inform results in deep is something veeeeeery weird.
Zwift could implement schedules so that we could arrange our training sessions. Make find workouts easier and meaningful (I honestly go to whatsonzwift to find what I want).
The way CE is working (or suppose to) it’s no that bad. Number are coherent, I’m ok with that. Just add a layer of result-based, that’s it! It does not look complicated to me. But, as said, it might be only 10% of their customers, and working on this would be to much trouble, so, they couldn’t care less.
And yes, I already canceled my subscription and gonna go to mywhoosh for workouts only. It’s free, and I don’t mind about powerups and squirrels running around.
they “work”, just not in the way people want them to. to be clear i do not like CE either and i support results based scoring, hopefully zwift can do a semi respectable job of it, it’s not an easy task
the ZP website was originally created by people in the community because zwift racing was a community invention, not a zwift invention. originally there were no categories or race events at all and races had to be organised and run informally
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boost mode, failed massively
@Mr.Ferdinand cruisers is lie/myth , there is only Racer and non racer.
zwift is like 90% non racer in a race.
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I have never understood why someone claims they can no longer race because of their category.
Sure, you may not win, but you can always race and try to improve.
I like the ride/race with no cats such as Tour of Zwift and Tour of Watopia.
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The Tour events are more like a Sportive I guess. There will always be someone seriously racing them, a few who just aim to finish, and a majority who just want to finish as high up as they can without seriously racing.
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@Tim_Camden_C Would you find funny start the Vuelta’s stage today and racing against Remco? I’m kidding, sure it’d be excellent, even though you’d ride only 15min with the bunch.
But the point is, it might be funny once or twice, but after 20 times you start a race and realize you’re in a wrong category because the competitors are way above you, it’s no longer funny and, therefore, zero motivation to compete again. Result: quite racing and go for those social rides.
Sure, this is my personal view based on my idea of sport, race, bike, etc. One could think otherwise and that’s ok, that’s the beauty of more than one idea.
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But with only one, open, category you’d be racing with folk around you.
I can improve myself doing solo rides as well. There is no point in doing races if it’s going to turn into a solo ride to the finish anyways. People who think getting dropped from the main group at the first sight of a minor hill is a good workout are the ones who have never done a good workout in their lives.
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Haha…the king of all cruisers! How you doing Bath? You upgrade to B yet or are you still playing with the C group and churning out gold cup…
No, i am not done with the C group. on Monday in the TFC race i am Racing D group.
https://www.youtube.com/@bathsalts1st i do learning how to race we now on Ep4 is stage 5 race the worlds. if you need help @The_Apache
Autocat working as intended, amirite?? lol
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Good man! Give those bastards hell!
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CE would at least have been tolerable if they had also introduced more categories at the same time that they introduced the enforcement i.e had 8 or 10 categories. That way the gap between top and bottom in each category would be less. It would still not be as good as a ELO/results based system but would at least have been better than the current 4 cat system.
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Since March this rider has earned something like 23 top-3 trophies. Instead of w/kg or CE shouldn’t race event organizers force riders (with results like this) to race A and/or force category upgrades?
If Zwift can not, or does not want to take on racing oversight, then it falls upon the race organizers to govern their events and results.
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if only people could be bothered
That would actually be epic. In fact, Zwift should simply drop all racing event; they definitely have trouble implementing realistic pack dynamics and overall speed realism imo. For me, I couldn’t care less about racing, and even though 1-10% of the users may think racing is crucial to the experience, the game-aspect is probably much more important for users who simply wants to get some exercise.
So drop the X% effort in doing races and focus on making the most fun exercise platform instead. I would SO much love to see Mariokart on Zwift!!!